Winter Anti-Training

I run, when my knee allows, about 18 miles a week. When winter rolls in and biking becomes impossible, I normally abandon cycling altogether and lean on treadmills in my ongoing battle against waisting away/going crazy. Lately, though, my knee has not allowed. A few months ago I ran in the Schenectady Stockade-a-thon 15K and somewhere along the way aggravated a long standing knee injury I incurred back in high school during my illustrious career as one the worst pole vaulters to ever come out of one of America’s worst high school pole vaulting programs. This is a recurring injury and it eventually goes away with other kinds of workouts that don’t involve running.

Specifically, this means using a stationary bike. Earlier last week, Liz gave a us some tips on indoor training. Eric also gave a very down-to-earth assessment of how we should be preparing for warmer weather. An indoor trainer, one you can attach your bike to, seems like a great idea. The problem for me is that I’m not a cyclist who races. I’m just looking to stay in shape. The result is that when I bike for a long time I get tired, lazy, and sloppy and when that happens on a bike you fall. Falling hurts. I don’t use an indoor trainer because I have enough call 911 enough as it is without having to do so to explain that I crashed my bicycle into my coffee table.

So, having my knee injury and because I’m physically and emotionally incapable of using an indoor trainer, I’m relegated to the stationary bikes at Planet Fitness, which are almost impossible to fall off of (I’ve tried) and which are safely in a “Judgment Free Zone”, a place I’m ever vigilant about keeping myself in on account of my delicate self-esteem and inability to take criticism.

The stationary bikes at Planet Fitness aren’t in great shape. They have small, usually broken radios on them that sometimes to allow you to listen to six different TVs (I never use these, preferring instead to take full advantage of being in the Judgment Free Zone to either film my YouTube video diaries or listen to Lady Ga Ga and singing into a “cellphone” at the top of my lungs), peeling display panels that give you dubious readings on your workout (my heart rate once went from 90, to 183, to 88, to 189 in a single ten second span at the end of which I really should have been dead and which prompted me to spend the rest of the workout pretending I was zombiecyclist) and which suddenly decide that you’ve been working too hard and cut back on the resistance (cycling too hard is a form of Judgment). Cycling on one of these I can’t help but feel as if I’m at some kind of late-Soviet-era Olympic badminton training facility. This is unsettling and makes it difficult to focus.

Removal of the possibility of death is a plus, but while the stationary bikes at Planet Fitness do have fans on them to make you feel like you’re on the real thing, stationary bikes are so poor a substitute for actual cycling that I find it hard to imagine that they’re worth the effort at all. They only increase the alienation I feel from cycling during the winter months; a fire without any of the warmth.

Unlike cyclists who are good enough to race or cyclists with the courage to go on adventures the idea of becoming better at cycling can’t keep me going. If it weren’t for my knee problems, I would be forsaking cycling entirely in the weeks where it’s genuinely too cold, messy, and generally absurd out to bike. But even for a bike commuter, stationary bikes do offer the hope that by the time it gets a little warmer, you might actually be a faster cyclist. For now, though, the stationary bikes at Planet Fitness are my Valley Forge and I can occasionally extricate from them brief moments of glory in which my muscle memory kicks in and I can just glide along as if I’m actually riding.

The rest of the time they just make you feel silly which, ultimately, you are.

4 Responses

You won’t fall over on a trainer — rollers, yes; a trainer, no. The problem I’ve had with all stationary bikes is that they don’t feel like a road bike at all — I have to adjust my stance to accommodate the ultra-wide saddles, for starters, they’re virtually unadjustable, and there is no way to get your legs into proper position. They’re set up like beach cruisers, not road bikes. While they’re okay for burning calories, I’ve found them to not fit my form at all, and to cause knee problems that I never ever have on the bike. Of all the stationaries I’ve tried, I will say the video game stationaries at the Greenbush Y, with imaginary courses you can ride through that provide corresponding changes in effort, are the best, because at least there’s something to occupy your mind during the mind-numbing boredom of stationary riding.

Like you, I don’t race, don’t tour, don’t ride in packs between latte stops. I just ride my bike.

As an amateur runner/cyclist I am really feeling the pinch of this winter (or maybe I’m just getting old?). I don’t mind the cold itself but the sloppy conditions and biting winds the past two weeks have made it impossible to be outdoors. I like to run and bike in part because it’s refreshing to be outside and in-sync with the region. Running on the treadmill or cycling in place is just…exercise. Blah!

When it’s cold and snowy outside, I try to do all the training type things I always skip in the summer in favor of a nice long run in the sunshine. Right now I am working on memorizing how different paces feel and doing intervals on the treadmill. I am also lifting weights and doing aerobics. Are there any classes at your gym? Winter can be a time to try new things.
Looking at the thermometer and the roads and having to give up running outdoors for weeks on end is hard, I’m sure it is the same with cycling.
Kathleen

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